10+ Tips for creating the Perfect Landing Page

What is a landing page?  Landing pages are website pages that you send visitors to after they click on a paid advertisement, a link from another website or type in a URL from a traditional marketing page.  It is a page designed with a single purpose, and you usually know where the visitor came from and why.  It is usually not a page that is accessible through a standard process on your website, but many of these tips can be used for designing any page on your site that has a ‘next action’ and you are trying to convert this visitor into a lead or a sale.

Your landing pages must be focused

Most likely your company offers multiple services and has many things to offer a potential customer.  However, you must target your landing pages with laser accuracy.  Don’t use a landing page to sell multiple services or products.  Instead, build a landing page for each unique item and market them individually.

Your Landing Page must have a goal and a ‘next action’

The most important element of your landing page is the ‘next action.’  You don’t want to pay money for ads that drive users to your website and then confuse them once they arrive with an overload of information.  Generally you want to get:

• The visitor to immediately purchase a product or service.  (or)
• You want to get contact information and personally sell a product or service later.

Designing your ‘next action’

It is important that you collect only what you need.  Don’t bog the visitor down with useless questions or ask them questions that are too personal or irrelevant.  If you want to collect information for a sales lead you will need a name, an email and maybe a phone number.  Don’t press for more information if it is not a necessity at that time.  Lengthy and personal processes become a barrier during the conversion process.
Don’t ask for too much too early.  If you are selling a product, don’t collect credit card information directly on your landing page, it's much too early in the process for that.  You want to move the user through a sales funnel.  Once your landing page has convinced them to buy, you want your next action to take them to another page where the sales transaction will be completed. 

Lead with an impact statement

Hit them with a bold headline, something they cannot avoid and make it have a serious impact.  Since you know where they came from and what they are looking for you should be able to make a connection and use this statement to further your goal.  And what is your goal? Your goal is to have them take the ‘next action’ or be engaging enough that they continue to read until they are ready to take the ‘next action.’

How much content should you have?

Simple is better, but don’t fret too much if your landing pages are getting long.  Some very effective landing pages are many pages of scrolling. However, follow these simple content rules.

• Lead with a bold and engaging statement
• Follow up with a short paragraph or a short bullet list of benefits
• Use your best material at the beginning of the paragraph and support it afterwards.
• Keep paragraphs short, 5 lines or less.
• Use Testimonials to back up your service or product
• Don’t use pictures unless they actually help sell the product.  They are often distracting on landing pages.
• When doing large pages, you should assume as they scroll you are giving them additional information to help them make a buying decision.  Don’t make content to make content; have it continually reinforce previous points and help you close the deal.  In general if you are asking for money you will need more content and more reinforcement.  If you are asking for a signup or subscription you will usually have less.
• At any point on the page the ‘next action’ should be clear.  Repeat your next action as necessary throughout the length of your page

Testimonials will sell

Don’t lead with a testimonial but consider having one visible above the fold, or soon after their first couple of scrolls.  Video testimonials are best, but text testimonials from credible individuals are also an effective way to motivate your visitor to take that next step.

Write in the second person

Use terms such as ‘you’ and ‘your’ not ‘we’ and ‘our.’

Remove anything that is not necessary

You don’t need to have your standard website navigation available, or information regarding offers and services.  Keep content related to the single task at hand.  This landing page should have everything necessary to educate, and move the user into taking that next action.  Don’t get them distracted by clicking on links about your company or digging through your blog.  Give them only what they need to buy or subscribe.

Here is an example Landing Page Design

Here are some landing page conversion ideas

• Offer a free whitepaper or free sample of a service.  Get the users contact information (name & email) and have an auto-responder send the document to their email address.  Use this email in the future to build a relationship and market additional paid services from your company.
• Offer a free personalized subscription or service.  Have the user fill out a questionnaire or survey and collect their email to get the results of their survey.  Or if you want to be even more aggressive, require them to subscribe to your service to get their results.  Collect their credit card information and give them a 14 day free trial. If they don’t cancel their subscription before the 14 days is out then they will be charged regularly for the subscription.
• Sell your product with a ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ button. Take them to a secure page that collects their billing & shipping information.  You can easily use PayPal for this, but consider processing the credit card on your website to increase your credibility and conversion rate.

Creating the perfect landing page will take time and effort. If you are using a statistics package such as Google Analytics you will be able to determine how many people have viewed your ad and what percentage of those visitors took the next step. That is called a conversion. With this information you can start fine tuning your landing page; working towards getting the best results possible.